City Hall targets secondary market for lift tickets

Park City considers enacting a law prohibiting reselling

By the time the ski season ends, it could be against the law to sell it to someone else in Park City.

City Hall is in talks with the two mountain resorts inside the Park City limits about creating a law that would prohibit someone in the city from selling a lift ticket on the secondary market.

Details have not been made public. A proposed law could be unveiled later in February. Mayor Dana Williams and the Park City Council could begin their discussions at a meeting on Feb. 28.

Thomas A. Daley Sr., the deputy Park City attorney, said PCMR and Deer Valley officials were provided a draft of the law several weeks ago. Daley said making violations misdemeanors is under consideration, but he did not provide details about the class of misdemeanor being discussed. Each misdemeanor class could result in jail time and a fine upon conviction.

"It's just to discourage people from doing it in the parking lots," Daley said about reselling lift tickets.

He said the law does not target lift tickets sold on the secondary market online, where they are regularly advertised.

Daley offered two scenarios that a law would aim to stop. In one, someone would buy a lift ticket in the morning, go skiing and then sell the ticket to someone else in the afternoon at a cheaper price than the buyer would pay at a resort ticket window.

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In the other, someone buying books of discounted lift tickets undercuts the resorts by selling them at prices that beat the rates at the ticket window.

"The resorts come to us every now and then with whatever issues are coming up over time," Daley said.

He said he had not received input beyond the two mountain resorts by Thursday. The possibility of a law being created has not been widely publicized. Details, including the language, will likely not be released until the week of the City Council meeting when the elected officials will begin their discussions.

In interviews, officials at PCMR and Deer Valley expressed support for a law. They outlined a number of reasons why one should be enacted.

Andy Miller, a spokesperson for PCMR, said lift tickets sold by the resort have small chips inside of them embedded with the mountain privileges that were bought as part of the ticket. Someone buying a lift ticket on the secondary market would not be sure what privileges come with the ticket, Miller said. Miller also said if someone purchased a lift ticket that had already been used, the buyer would not be able to use it again.

Miller said PCMR's security team asks people to leave if they are seen attempting to sell a lift ticket on resort property.

At Deer Valley, meanwhile, President and General Manager Bob Wheaton said lift ticket reselling is an occasional issue at the resort. He said people sometimes arrive at Deer Valley with a complimentary lift ticket and attempt to sell the ticket in the resort parking lots.